Just making sure I can do thisIf I pick up an ebay Thinkpad, sans OS and HD, but with COA sticker, I'll need to buy a HD/SSD, drop it in the caddy, drop the whole thing in, call up Lenovo, order recovery CDs and put that in and I'm done?Thanks!

Depending on how old your 'new' Thinkpad will be, Lenovo might not sell any more Recovery CDs for your wanted model.But put an ad in the Marketplace Forum (WTB = want to buy), specifying for what model and what OS.Using official recovery CDs (or copies thereof) you don't need the COA of the laptop, those CDs have a built-in volume license.

_________________Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)Currently back home in Ireland to enjoy the RBS!

Or, if you can borrow an OEM (OEM only, not retail, VL, etc.) XP disc, you can install a plain vanilla OS using the license key on the bottom. But, you will have to activate the OEM with Microsoft, and you don't have to with Recovery discs.

And technically it isn't a VLK but a pre-activated OEM key (still legally requires a CoA sticker).

There is no such thing as a pre-activated OEM key. The factory image key used by Lenovo is a VLK associated with a SLIC (System Licensed Internal Code) in the BIOS...... all systems from the factory have the same key.

Yes all systems from the same vendor use the same key but it is still an OEM key; if you extract the key from a pre-installed XP system (using keyfinder etc.) you can use that key to install from a generic OEM CD. Volume license keys do not work on OEM CDs or vice versa.

The target Thinkpad was nominated as an x61, which implies Vista. What you describe is simply wrong for Vista and Win 7.

My X61 CTO came with XP but yes Vista/7 use a somewhat different system. I'm fairly certain that Vista/7 OEM SLP keys are still not volume license keys even though just like the XP OEM SLP keys they are used across all systems from the same vendor.